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Updated: May 10, 2025
Lilly and Marlow deserve to be noticed among the predecessors of Shakspeare. Lilly was a scholar, and laboured to introduce a stilted elegance into English prose, and in the tone of dialogue, with such success, that for a period he was the fashionable writer, and the court ladies even formed their conversation after the model of his Euphues.
In Italy the Renaissance had reached its height: England, feeling the new life which had been infused into arts and letters, turned instinctively to Italy, and adopted her canons of taste. 'Euphues' has a distinct connection with the Italian discourses of polite culture. Sidney's 'Arcadia' is a copy of what Boccaccio had attempted in his classical romances, and Sanazzaro in his pastorals.
Memorable, too, in this branch of literature is Harington's Apologie for Poetry , prefixed to his translation of the Orlando Furioso. But it was not criticism only which had been advancing. The publication of the first part of Lyly's Euphues and of Spenser's Shepherd's Calendar in 1579 may be said to have initiated the golden age of our literature.
This prose was, however, far more varied and important than that of any preceding age. The books mentioned on page 123 constitute only a small part of the prose of this period. Lyly, Sidney, Hooker. Much of Lyly's subject matter is borrowed, and his form reflects the artificial style then popular over Europe. Euphues, a young Athenian, goes to Naples, where he falls in love and is jilted.
Even that old gentleman of Naples who came first to Euphues because his heart bled to see so noble a youth given to loose living has the tables turned upon him, for Euphues preaches to the preacher upon the sovereign duty of resignation to the will of God. A noteworthy characteristic is the frequency of Lyly's classical allusions.
The conversation between the two is the first and not the least amusing illustration of the courtly verbal fencing with which the book is filled. The advice of the old man only provokes Euphues into making the sophistical plea that his style of living is right because nature prompts him to it; and he leaves Eubulus 'in a great quandary' and in tears.
The year 1579 is in the strictest sense an epoch in the history of English Literature; as witnessing the first appearance of a new and original force in English verse, and the first deliberate and elaborate effort in the direction of artistically constructed English Prose. In that year, John Lyly published his Euphues: the Anatomy of Wit, and Edmund Spenser his Shepherd's Calendar.
Eubulus tells Euphues that in that city are those who 'sleep with meat in their mouths, with sin in their hearts, and with shame in their houses. There is no limit to the inconveniences of traveling.
Lyly dedicated his Euphues to the "Ladies and Gentlewomen of England" and Sidney's Arcadia owed its vast success to its female readers. The subjects studied followed the orthodox views. Beginning with the reign of Queen Anne boarding-schools for girls became very numerous. At these schools "young Gentlewomen" were "soberly educated" and "taught all sorts of learning fit for young Gentlewomen."
On New Year's, 1584, John Lyly, the author of Euphues, presented in the first Blackfriars Theater his prose comedy, entitled Campaspe. This play relates the love story of Alexander the Great's fair Theban captive, Campaspe. The twenty-eight characters necessary to produce this play were obtained from the boys of the Chapel Royal and St. Paul's Cathedral.
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